Walking For Health
The Elvaston Circuit - Part 03
w/e 26 April 2015
All of this week's pictures were taken with a Kodak DX6490

Choice

Golden GatesLong DriveThe final mile of this three mile Walking for Health route resumes at the Golden Gates (left) in the Elvaston Castle Country Park. After passing through the gates a choice of paths is available around an oval of grass (above) but both come together to continue along the long narrow drive (right) towards the centre of the park. It is easy to imagine whilst walking along here, coaches and horses making their way to and from the house at the far end carrying the gentry in times gone by.
Topiary Garden

We left the drive at the far end to pass through the topiary garden to reach the house. Sadly some visitors with their children seemed oblivious to the requests to keep of the grass and were tripping through the box hedges as though they were in a maze searching for the way out.
Fortified Entrance

Much of the house is shrouded with scaffolding and sheeting as work is carried out but we turned left and headed for the fortified entrance into the courtyard.
St Bartholomew's Church

The castle is actually a Gothic style mansion, formerly the home of the Earls of Harrington and it stands adjacent to the church dedicated to St Bartholomew which can be seen just over the wall as we turned into the courtyard. The intention was to pass through the courtyard to the other side of the house and proceed to the car park along the south side of the lake. The work taking place though meant that the exit was closed so we continued through the courtyard, past the visitor centre and back towards the path to the River Derwent.
Carvings

Turning off that path though we walked past a field where someone had been busy carving animal figures on old tree stumps. The mansion and other buildings can be seen in the distance together with some of the scaffolding.
To The Lake

TopiaryFootbridgeThis path also took us past another garden where topiary was again much in evidence (left) before leading to a footbridge at the end of the lake where a number of people had gathered (above) to decide where to go next. Our choice was much simpler as we knew where we were headed so we crossed the bridge and turned right following paths through the trees and across more bridges (right).
Lakeside

Now on the north side of the lake we walked alongside the edge of the water and, like many more, enjoyed the fine spring weather, the budding plants and the wild birds on the lake.
Rock Formations

This route also took us past some of the rock formations that are a feature on this side of the lake and which entice many, especially children, to climb and explore.
Across The Lake

There were many and various views across the lake and this one is typical showing more people on the grass on the south side who were also enjoying this pleasant afternoon.
Through The Woods

Eventually we turned away from the lake and followed one of several paths through the woods to the car park to complete our walk.

Back to Part 02

To see a map/aerial view of the whole route in a new window follow this link.

Home
Back to Walking For Health Index
Special Features Index
Terms & Conditions of Use
This website is copyright but licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence.
Please credit the photographer Garth Newton, or add a link to these pages.